WET & WENDY'S TOP 10 CHRISTMAS MOVIES

One Christmas in London, then one Christmas in Melbourne, one Christmas in London...well you get my drift. Last year was spend in the "Blizzard of 2010" in London and it was WONDERFUL. The boy and I bought a sled and carried the groceries home from the shops. We made snow angels and watched kids push a giant snowball across the street the size of a small car. The Christmas Spirit was infectious.

This year its a Sunny/ blustery/ rainy/ hot/ cold one in Melbs and we are enjoying the thought of the BBQ being lit. No matter where we are in the world, whether its minus 5 degrees or 35 degrees, one thing does not change and that is the need to bunker down and treat yourself to a Christmas movie marathon.

So here they are, our top 10 movies to watch this festive season, we have been trying to rent groundhog day at our local and it's been out for two weeks! get in quick!

It's a wonderful life: 1946- read here
Reason: The classic factor

Elf: 2003-  read here
Reason: The LOL factor 

Groundhog Day: 2003 - read here
Reason: The never get's tired factor

Home Alone: 1990 - read here
Reason: The childhood memory factor 

Edward Scissorhands: 1990 - read here
Reason: The wintery wonderland factor 

 White Christmas:1954 - read here
Reason: The original and the best factor 

The Muppet Christmas Carol: 1992 - read here
Reason: The cute factor 

 The Holiday: 2006 - read here
Reason: The cheese ball factor

Bad Santa: 2003 - read here
Reason: The genius factor 

National Lampoons Christmas Vacation: 1989 - read here
Reason: The funniest man of all time factor


WET & WENDY LOVES THE FESTIVE SEASON

IT WAS A DARK & STORMY NIGHT...

Weather scenes in fiction is a beautiful thing. It is entirely up to you, the reader as to the magical vision in your mind. You are given the words, the description- and the weather unfolds the way only you interpret it.

IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT...

The original book which starts with this phrase, the utmost favourite here at Wet & Wendy was written by Victorian novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton at the beginning of his 1830 novel Paul Clifford.

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

A few other beautiful weather scenes from some of the classics...

EMMA- Jane Austin- 1815

The evening of this day was very long and melancholy...the weather added what it could of gloom. A cold, stormy rain set in, and nothing of July appeared but in the trees and shrubs, which the wind was despoiling, and the length of the day, which only made such cruel sights the longer visible.

TALES OF THE JAZZ AGE - F. Scott Fitzgerald - 1922

The street was hot at three and hotter still at four, the April dust seeming to enmesh the sun and give it forth again as a world-old joke forever played on an eternity of afternoons. But at half past four a first layer of quiet fell and the shades lengthened under the awnings and heavy foliaged trees. In this heat nothing mattered. All life was weather, a waiting through the hot where events had no significance for the cool that was soft and caressing like a woman's hand on a tired forehead.

 STORM- George Rippey Stewart- 1941

This novel, featuring a Pacific storm called "Maria". prompted the National Weather Service to use personal names to designate storms. This is still the case today.

As a man is conceived in the fierce onset of opposing natures, so also a storm begins in the clash of dry cold air from the north and the mild moist air of the south. Like a person, a storm is a focus of activities, continuing and varying through a longer or shorter period of time, having a birth, youth, maturity, old age and death. It moves, in a sense, it reproduces its kind, and even takes in food, exhausts it of energy and casts out the waste.

SO..LIKE..TOTALLY.. ECLIPSED

Tomorrow, Friday November 25th 2011 sees a partial eclipse of the sun in the southern most parts of this wonderous planet. If you are fortunate enough to be in TASMANIA or the SOUTHERN ISLAND OF NEW ZEALAND tomorrow, you will see the phenomonen just before dusk. In Tasmania, a partial solar eclipse will be observable using safe solar viewing techniques between approximately 6.32pm and 7.06pm Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time, Maximum eclipse is at 6.49 pm.
The best places to view will be Antarctica & The southern Tip of South America.

If you see it please let us know what it was like!

Solar eclipses occur when the Moon briefly passes directly between the Earth and the Sun. If you happen to be on the right part of the Earth’s surface, (with safe viewing techniques) you will be able to see part or all of the Sun blocked from view. You can either have total solar eclipses (where all of the Sun is blocked from view) or a partial solar eclipse (where only part of the Sun is blocked from view). The ideal place to view Friday’s partial solar eclipse would be Antarctica where almost all of the Sun will be blocked from view. Further information about the eclipse can be found on NASA’s Eclipse Website.
As an aside, there will be a total lunar eclipse visible on the night of 10/11 December 2011 across Australia. See Nightsky for further info

You may also like our previous post TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE HEART

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PARAPLU

Thanks to places like the Dutch National Archives, we can see incredible imagery like these...it's truely endless..see more here

SUN IS A LOVELY WORD

SUMMER FESTIVALS BEGIN!

1. W&W Mini Cape $49.95
2. W&W Boater Hat $$29.95
3. W&W Duffle Bag $49.95
4. W&W Pinstripe Sunbrella $39.95
5. W&W Pac-a-Mac Raincoat (avail in Mens & womens) $99.95

See the WEBSTORE TO PURCHASE!

TOMORROW marks the first day of the festival season for us here at Wet & Wendy!
We will be peddling our wares with the Wonderful Weather Wagon at the HARVEST PRESENTS festival at Werribee Mansion.

We would love to see you there, even if just to talk about the weather!

RAIN LOVER

The Melbourne Cup, as the locals know races on in rain, hail or shine and punters don't seem to mind what the weather is. Wet & Wendy's favourite story of the Cup and it's past is the beautiful horse of the 1960's; Rain Lover. A horse who inspired the limited edition 'Love The Race' brellas this year which sold out here at W&W faster than you could say "and they're off...!"

Rain Lover was one of the very few horses to win the Melbourne Cup more than once winning in 1968 & 1969.
In his first Melbourne Cup triumph, under jockey Jim Johnson, Rain Lover won by a record eight-length margin and in a record time of 3:19.1. Jim was also noted for his unusual riding style of virtually standing up and was one of the few great jockeys to win the Melbourne cup three times.

Controversy surrounded his second win as the hot favourite and heavily backed Big Philou trained by Bart Cummings was the victim of a doping scandal and was withdrawn from the race 39 minutes before the start. Burdened with 9 st. 7 lbs. Rain Lover still went on the win the race from Alsop and created history as the first back-to-back winner since Archer in 1861 and 1862.
Info & stats provided by RaceRate.

Wet & Wendy 'Love The Race' Umbrella- now sold out but plain stripes (without horses) available from Thursday at the ONLINE STORE as well as visit our local stockists.

ENDLESS RAIN INTO A PAPER CUP

I'm not sure any band loved brellas as much as The Beatles.

My favourite Beatles lyric is from Across The Universe......
"words are flying out like endless rain into a paper cup"

In the Beatles song Rain, the backwards vocal at the end fade out is actually the songs first line:
"When the rain comes they run and hide their heads".  

Rain was said to have been written by John after observing the hurried way pedestrians move out of the way of raindrops.  

SPRING RAINING CARNIVAL

This Years 2011 Melbourne Spring Racing Carnival has been forecast with alot of rain. Like last year in particular, this year's carnival is set to be awash with drowning stilleto's and tipsy punters cowering from the downpour with a plastic bag over their heads, or better still a full body clear kagool. 
If you need refreshing on this...

The new Wet & Wendy collection launches next week and wouldn't the racing carnival be different if everyone was decked out in their W&W goods looking super stylish in the rain?  C'mon Melbourne!

WET & WENDY LOVES THE RACE

WATER CITY

EXPO Water city from martin de thurah on Vimeo.

The Sound of water....like nothing else....

Visit director Martin De Thurah's world here.

Director Martin de Thurah
Dop Kasper Tuxen, Martin de Thurah
Edit Adam Nielsen
Producer Malene Dyhring / Bacon
Part of the Danish pavillion
EXPO Shanghai 2010

LOUIS VUITTON- SS12

Bring on the Brella Love....and bring on the Wet & Wendy SS11/12 'Love The Sun' collection hitting stores and our webstore 1st week November

FASHIONABLE ELEMENTS

SUNSHINE

Vintage ad C/- flickr, mini clutch by Marc Jacobs

• Yuma in Arizona (USA) is the sunniest place in the world.  It experiences an average of 4,055 hours of sunshine each year (out of a possible 4,456 hours).  
• It takes eight minutes for the sun to travel to earth and so that glorious sunshine hitting your face right now left the sun eight minutes ago (you may remember this from my past post title 'eight minutes' read it here.

RAIN

pic by morethanblessed, clear shoes buy here

• The amount of water held in the atmosphere at any time is sufficient to produce about 2.5cm (1 inch) of rain over the surface of the earth. 
• The total amount of precipitation to fall to earth in one year is 5,000 million million tonnes.  
• A rainbow was visible for 6 hours (from 9am to 6pm) at Wetherby, Yorkshire (UK) on 14 March 1994.  This is rare as most rainbows last for only a few minutes.  
• The Largest Hailstone fell to earth in Bangladesh in 1986, it weighed 1kg.

WIND

Skirt by Antik Batik

• The windiest place in the world is Port Martin, Antarctica, which has an average wind speed over a year of 64 km/h (40 mph).   It experiences gale force 8 winds for over a hundred days a year
• The fastest winds on earth are inside a tornado funnel.  Winds here have been recorded at 480 km/h (300 mph). 
  

 SNOW

Snowdome bycreepy snowballs, Lace shorts by shakuhatchi

• The Most Snow Produced in a single snowstorm was 4.8 metres, in California in 1959.
• Permanent snow and ice cover about 12% (21 million square km's) of the Earth's land surface.
• The largest snowflakes in the world fell across Fort Keogh in Montana (USA) on 28 January 1887.  The flakes were measured at a massive 38cm (15 ins) across by 20cm (8 ins) thick.  

LIGHTNING

dress by Stella Mc Cartney on Net-a-Porter

• At any particular time, there are approximately 1,800 thunderstorms occurring in the Earth's atmosphere.
• A typical flash of folk lightning lasts for about 0.2 seconds and is five times hotter than the surface of the sun
  
  
  Amazing weather facts provided by www.gungahlinweather.com

  
  
  
  
  
  
  WET & WENDY LOVES THE ELEMENTS
  
  
  
  

IT'S IN THE STARS

I've been meaning to get to the Planetarium for a while. I have this romantic idea of a date night lying back staring up into the depths of the universe getting lost in the wonder of what's out there. I went about ten years ago, and yes on a date but i think i was so nervous that i didn't enjoy it.

Until I actually find the time to go, I'm ordering this baby then i can drift off into the milky way every night.

Available online here

Available online here

WHAT DO YOU EXPECT?

POOTLING

Who wouldn't like to be pootling along in the sweet sunshine on a little boat right now?  A few friends, a frenchstick and prosecco, slowly making your way through the day. 
 I must admit,  I dont really love big boats, i've had a few bad experiences, but what i do really love is a slow meander, hugging the coast of an island or even better the Cote D' Azur....or even better than that, time travelling back to the 60's to do so...c'mon lets pootle together in the sun... even if only in our minds...

Elvis Presley & Charlie Hodge Summer of 1968

Ah Marilyn..1941

The Norfolk Broads 1960s